Thin Line
by Charis M
Summary: “He considers it his prerogative to worry about her, not just as a servant, but as a friend, and at times as a father.  Someone has to look out for her well–being.”  As Integra fights her way back to life following the bubhanshee attack, Walter makes tea.


**Thin Line**  
by Charis

_Disclaimer: None of this is mine. Based off the anime rather than the manga._

_Notes: If anyone's going to skirt the line between servant and relative, it's Walter, and he strikes me as more of a fond parent than her father might have been. (Alucard toes the line, but it doesn't seem like it's between servant and relative.) This isn't quite what I intended to write; it got a bit out of hand as it went on._

Sometimes, when he watches her during one of the briefings or when she's giving commands in the field, he wonders if maybe it was a mistake to bring her up the way she was. He won't argue that she is a superb leader, an excellent tactician, and as devoted to the cause as anyone could ask. But he wonders sometimes if maybe it's too much.

He knows as much about psychology as the next man: environment during upbringing influences adult temperament. That's easy. He just wonders what sort of effect being brought up around soldiers would have on a little girl, especially one who hardly can remember her mother. She had nannies, but they seldom lasted long, and it was to him that she often came when she was very little, bringing her cuts and bruises and stories. Her father was not especially emotive, and though he was genuinely fond of his daughter, he pushed her twice as hard as he might have a son. Walter, who knew the elder Hellsing better than most, suspects the man regretted -- if only subconsciously -- that Integra was not a boy. Sometimes he suspects that Integra realised this, if only on that same level.

And so it was to him she always came, and he would give her cookies along with her tea and listen patiently to the discoveries of the day, would praise her when she did not flinch as he cleaned the scrapes with antiseptic. He never had a family of his own, and he does not regret it. Hellsing has always been his life, as much as it has been hers.

Those who know about them call them fanatics. Maybe it's true. Maybe you have to be a little bit of a fanatic to take on a hopeless, thankless task like this one. He has been behind enemy lines in the midst of a war, fought alongside the monster who is the heart of Hellsing's power; he knows all about fanaticism.

But he still wonders sometimes if maybe they brought her up too hard, especially when he remembers the little girl.

Of those still alive these days, few were around to see her like that. Fergusson is given overmuch to the military order: Integra is his superior, and even as a child, he knew her very little -- even then he made the distinction between their ranks. Alucard did not truly meet her until she had been hardened by her father's death and her uncle's betrayal, on the very cusp of becoming the woman she is now. Only Walter, really, knows about the child who came to him for reassurance and cocoa when she had nightmares, who triumphantly showed him her first loose tooth. Every time he sees her in the shooting gallery, it is juxtaposed with the image of a little girl with bony wrists trying to hold a gun far too large for her. The child will never be completely gone.

He considers it his prerogative to worry about her, not just as a servant, but as a friend, and at times as a father. Someone has to look out for her well-being, or she would live on adrenaline and determination and those horrendous cigars, and probably nothing else. And while Alucard's taunts goad her into doing things, they only make other things worse in turn, among them (he is certain) her blood pressure.

It's all her armour. The suits, the cravats (though he thinks she learned that habit from Alucard), the gloves -- the whole physical presence distancing her from everyone who might get close. The cigars -- wretched habit -- to occupy her hands and provide an appearance of boredom and calm no matter the situation. The abrasive, brusque personality, the clipped, almost dictatorial manner of speaking -- the attitude of She Who Must Be Obeyed which never slips, even with the rages that come whenever something of hers is threatened. She has it down to an art, but he has known her for too long to be fooled entirely; he sees the small signs of stress and worry and a myriad of other emotions, repressed so ruthlessly that she can pretend they do not exist -- can even convince herself that is true.

But she will always be, on some level, that little girl, and he will worry all the same.

And Death has come for the Maiden.

She is lying in the other room, in the makeshift surgery, pale and still, all the armour gone, physical and psychological. It is not the first time he's had to stand back and let her do something on her own, but it _is_ the most he has ever feared for her, and the first time the guilt has stabbed into him, because he was too blind this time to protect her. He wears his own armour, the familiar rhythm of tasks; Seras comes in to find him making tea and he says something about Integra expecting it when she wakes, as much to convince himself as to assure her that Integra is strong and will recover -- because he remembers the chinks and is afraid, though he does not want to be and feels obscurely guilty for doubting her, that it was a greater failure which made her put the blade through her throat. He knows Alucard disagrees, but though the vampire can see into Integra's mind, Walter wonders if maybe he deludes himself in turn. Like the rest of them, Alucard is not as free of feeling as he would like to appear.

So he makes tea, and waits. Over the years, he has gotten very good at waiting, and hiding his worry, when the woman who is no longer a little girl goes out to confront the world. And waiting, he wonders whether this will perhaps convince Integra she does not always have to appear indomitable. There are times when he misses the confidences shared all those years ago.


End file.
